Feast Homily: "No More Bother Wars"

The Reformation Feast and the Church's Shared Table

Brothers and sisters, there is something gloriously fitting about celebrating the Reformation around a table. Here are the saints, and here are the children, here's the food, and here's the ample evidence that our Heavenly Father is not a stingy host.

Christ reigns, and our sins are forgiven. The bread has arrived, and somebody here ought to be smiling. And yet, if you learned about Reformed Christianity entirely from the internet, you might reasonably conclude that the chief end of man is to expose another Presbyterian and to enjoy their humility forever.

Controversy, Rebuke, and the Care of Christ's Sheep

Every week, another controversy, another denunciation, another man with a microphone explaining why the fellow with the other microphone is the greatest threat to Christendom since the invention of the indulgent box.

Sometimes, a public rebuke is necessary. Sometimes, the wolves really are wearing clerical collars. That's good and right. Scripture commands us to expose false teaching, to confront sin, and to protect Christ's sheep.

Paul rebuked Peter publicly when his conduct compromised the truth of the gospel. Faithfulness requires courage. But a brother in Christ is not a wolf merely because he has irritated us. And an audience is not a flock that you've been called to pastor or to care for because it enjoys watching you take the next bite.

The Attention Economy of Christian Conflict

The temptation that we must name plainly in our day that is disheartening to me is a pastor can discover that attacking another pastor will grow his audience and his market share and his brand. Controversy brings algorithmic attention, and attention brings subscribers, and subscribers bring influence, and influence brings income and speaking engagements and signed book sales and everything else.

Before long, another man's reputation simply becomes the raw material for your little media empire. When we attack brothers to increase our market share, we're putting a price tag on the piece of Jesus's church.

Now, I can't see everyone's motives, God can, but every man with a pulpit, a podcast, or a publish button ought to ask himself whether he wants his brother restored or if he simply wants his brother's listeners.

Spiritual Warfare Against Shared Enemies

And those of us who are the audience of these shows must ask ourself why we keep buying tickets. We confess that Christ will disciple the nations. We sing about his dominion extending from sea to sea.

We expect our grandchildren to build upon the ground that we've taken, splendid. Then surely we can stop firing shots into our own ranks as if that's the way we're gonna win the war. An army that spends its breakfast shooting its own officers shouldn't boast too loudly when they're being taken over by supper.

Our warfare is spiritual. Our weapons are the word of God and prayer and repentance and faithful discipline and sacrificial love and the proclamation of the gospel. Our neighbors are people that we are to win, including those who presently oppose us.

The devil, falsehood, sin are the enemies that we fight. And the brother beside of us with whom we share one Lord, one faith, one faith, belongs under the same banner as we do. Now that brings me to Martin Buzer.

Martin Buzer and the Roots of His Reformation Work

If there ever was a man that the reformation produced who tried to stop Christians from using their finest ammunition on one another, it was Martin Buzer. It was the stubborn little shepherd from Strasbourg.

He was born in 1491 in Schlottstadt in Aus. He came from an artisan family. He received a very strong education and entered the Dominican order as a young man. He studied at Heidelberg, where his reading brought him under the influence of Erasmus.

And then in 1518, he heard Martin Luther at Heidelberg and he heard his dispensation or disputation and his theological world shifted. Here was a proclamation of grace that drove him back to the gospel.

The Lord was preparing a man who would spend his life insisting that the gospel reconcile sinners to God. That same gospel also obligates sinners in the church to love one another. Buzer left the Dominican order in 1521.

In 1522, he married Elizabeth Silberson. Not sure if I pronounced that right. A former nun. By 1523, after opposition to his preaching, he came to Strasbourg, where he became one of the leading figures of the city's reformation and one of the leading figures in the reformation and the namesake of our presbytery, the Buzer Presbytery.

Bucer's Patient Mediation Between Divided Reformers

But leaving Rome didn't mean leaving conflict behind. The reformers themselves were tearing themselves apart. Luther and Zwingli disagreed so profoundly on the Lord's Supper that Luther said Zwingli was a son of the devil.

Literally a love child between his mother and Satan. Luther said these things. Buzer couldn't settle them by telling everyone to stop caring about doctrine either. He had to do something much harder. He had to listen carefully.

He had to distinguish actual disagreement from misunderstanding and labor from confession. He had to work as a middleman in the reformation to bring the factions together. And that kind of work takes patience, especially when every man at the table has a formable mind and a personality like Martin Luther.

Building Shared Confession Across Protestant Divisions

In 1529, Buzer participated in the Marburg Colloquy, where Luther and Zwingli met in an effort to resolve their differences. They reached substantial agreement, but the dispute over the Lord's Supper remained unsolved and the wider Protestant cause was divided into what we see today, which is nearly 25 ,000 denominations and still splintering.

But Buzer kept working. In 1530, at the Diet of Augsburg, he and Wolfgang Capito prepared the Tetrapolitan Confession for Strasbourg. Constance Mimigan and Lindau also participated. Four cities speaking together.

Four communities refusing to remain isolated. Their confession grounded preaching in scripture and confessed salvation by God's grace through Christ. And it did not unite every single Protestant disagreement under one banner, but it did give everyone a shared confession.

That's the first lesson. When you cannot bring the entire army together today, you start by faithfully standing with your brothers that you can gather right now. Then came years of further negotiations.

Persistence Through Difficult Negotiations

In 1534, Buzer reached an agreement with Philip Melanchthon at Kassel. In 1536, he helped bring a German theologian into agreement with Luther Melanchthon through the Wittenberg Concord. The agreement addressed the Lord's Supper and narrowed the breach that had divided the evangelical churches.

Consider what that would have required. He had to return to difficult conversations again. He had to explain himself again. He had to hear objections again. And if you've ever been in the middle of a conflict, you get shot on both sides.

Some of us can declare a man impossible after three comments and after a misunderstood text message and we're done. But Buzer kept after it for years and years and years. And here's the picture that I want us to carry home tonight.

Reformation Requires Unity Beyond Doctrine

The Reformation at the time was a formidable force, but it was formidable in the way that five fingers are formidable, but not very strong if you try to punch someone. You try to punch someone with five fingers, you're gonna break your fingers.

But Buzer was trying to bring the faction elements together so that they actually had punch, so that they actually had force. And we need Martin Buzer today. The reason that I wanted to talk about this tonight is that we need Reformation in this country and in the church.

And a lot of that Reformation is we need doctrinal Reformation, absolutely. We've lost sight of what it means to be saved by grace. But one of the things we've lost sight of in the group of people who know that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone.

We've lost unity. We've lost love. We've lost brotherhood. We're never going to see Jesus's kingdom advance if we keep shooting each other. We're never gonna see Jesus's kingdom advance if we keep acting more like Americans than Christians.

We need a Reformation and we need men and women like you to be Martin Buzers, to work for it, to see Jesus's prayer come true. Do you know Jesus prayed one of the final things that he ever uttered on his lips?

Father, make them one as you and I are one. May we never be caught working against that prayer of Christ and may we always be caught working for it. Amen? Amen. Let's pray. God, we thank you. We thank you for Martin Buzer and we thank you for the wonderful work that he did in Strasburg and bringing the Reformation reformers together.

Lord, would you cause us to have that spirit, to see unity be central to our efforts. Lord, we certainly know that we can't unite in heresy. We can't unite in egregious error, but Lord, we also need not shoot the ones who call upon your name.

Lord, let us show our love for you in the way that we love one another. Let us, this little church in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, be mighty and bold in our love for you and in our spreading of the gospel in this land and also in our love for one another and in our love for your church.

You came, you left heaven to die for your church so that she would be your spotless bride. Lord, let us not bride bash and have brother wars. Let us be faithful to love those who you've called and who you've loved.

In Jesus' name, amen. So now we feast. And I didn't pray for the food, so let's pray again. Father, thank you for this food. Thank you for all your many gifts. Thank you for this people. Thank you for our joy and excitement.

And Lord, would you make this food a blessing to our bodies and would you make it nourish us for the work that you have for us. In Jesus' name, amen. Let's eat.